After the phony cliff, we face the terrifying one.

Last week, Fareed Zakaria and Charles Krauthammer appeared in Toronto (where I live much of the time), and while I did not go to their main debate, I went to a tasting of it at a luncheon. There was, I regret to write, as a longstanding friend of both of them, a surreal aspect to the exchange. After the usual compliments one exchanges (as I know from my time on that circuit), they embarked on a dialogue of the deaf, and a mutual flight, joined at the wingtip like Jurassic pterodactyls, soaring above the mighty chasm of American fiscal problems below. The otherworldly discussion of whether the Republican leaders in Congress will reach an agreement with the president about the automatic expiration of the Bush tax cuts of a decade ago vastly overshadowed the issue of reinserting spontaneous growth into the U.S. economy and grappling with the deficit at last.

…..read more HERE

Cheetahs are the fastest runners (60mph) on the planet. 

Using a Phantom camera filming at 1200 frames per second while zooming beside a sprinting cheetah, this team captured every nuance of the cat’s movement as it reached top speeds of 60+ miles per hour.

The extraordinary footage that follows is a compilation of multiple runs by five cheetahs during three days of filming.

Ed Notes: 

1. for a full screen image (very very highly recommended) click on the 4 arrows at the lower right hand side of the video (beside  HD) below.

2. An amazing slow motion shot of the Cheetah almost catching its prey claws extended at the 2:25 mark.

3. To see the Cheetah running at an astonishing 60mph and capturing its prey go to minute 6:10 forward. 

Update: Turns out multiple youtube presentations have caused National Geographic to take down the video I had posted here. You can go to the National Geographic site here – Cheetahs on the Edge–Director’s Cut from Gregory Wilson on Vimeo.

Mike addresses two Goofy’s this week, one involving the Grey Cup, the other involving some truly Royal expenditures going on in a Democratic Politician’s office.

{mp3}mtdec1goofy1{/mp3}

While there is still lots of caterwauling about Hurricane Sandy and climate, it is telling that this new update shows that the last five years record the lowest period of landfalling hurricane intensity of any five-year period dating all the way back to 1900.

Dr. Roger Pielke Jr. writes on his blog today:

The figure above comes courtesy Chris Landsea of the US National Hurricane Center. It shows the annual intensity of US landfalling hurricanes from 1900 to 2012. The figure updates a graph first published inNature in 2005 ( Figure 2 here in PDF, details described there). ….continue reading HERE